Ockham’s Razor [Series 86, Episode 102] – The Greenhouse Effect, Part 2 – Effect – Doctor Brian Tucker [CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research] 19 Oct 1986 – 19 Oct 1986
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 347ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that Australian media under the ABC had been doing science programmes on television and radio which mentioned carbon dioxide build up, since the late 1960s. The very first episode of the Science Show with Robyn Williams in 1975 had as guest Peter Richie Calder, and he talked about carbon dioxide build up.
And the Science Show had kept wanging on about carbon dioxide build up, as had various ABC science programmes. Ockham’s Razor had begun in 1984…
Thespecificcontext was that the Villach meeting in October of 1985 had really stiffened the spines of atmospheric scientists. The discovery of the hole in the ozone had given them credibility and entree to elite policy making circles, and in June of 1986 the CSIRO Atmospheric Physics Division Chief Brian Tucker, who had previously written a monograph about carbon dioxide and climate, had briefed the Australian Environment Council. And so within the scientifically aware policy circles, ozone depletion, and especially carbon dioxide build-up and of greenhouse gases overall were becoming things that could no longer be ignored.
What I think we can learn from this is it is forty years since the warnings began getting a bit louder.
What happened next. The warnings broke through in 1988. They have come and gone from the front pages, but the science is ever more certain. The emissions climb, the concentrations climb. That’s all.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
Xx
References
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
The latest weekly “El Nino Digest” Times (‘END Times’, geddit?) is up as a pdf and a word doc.
Text below
Colour Me
Or “Ocean Colour Scream”…
“Monthly SSTs for September were more than 3°C above average across the central and equatorial Pacific, including much of the Nino 3.4 region. The largest anomalies occurred farther east along the Peruvian coast and west of the Galápagos, reaching 6–7°C above average in those areas.”
In these dark days man tends to look for little shafts of light that spill from Heaven…. So I propose to share tiny flashes that have illuminated my sombre life and… have a joke per issue, as far as possible, El Niño or weather-themed.
What do you call a woman who sits at her kitchen table setting fire to her bills, IOUs and council tax demand?
Answer on the last page of this issue.
Welcome to the 5th of at least 7 weekly issues of the ElNiño Digest Times (END Times – geddit?). The why should be self-explanatory, but here’s a FAQ just in case. We are still just about in the first of the three phases of El Niño but not for long…
Here’s the database I’ve begun (but almost certainly will not maintain). It’s largely based on two Google Alerts for “El Niño” and “Impacts” and “Godzilla”. Plus things people (like you) send me.
There are a lot of good El Niño explainers out there – this one, by Al Jazeera is really good and I will link to it at the top of every digest until someone suggests a better one (ideally with the url written on a £50 note).
Editorial
I just today (Saturday 17th) read Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” You can find it online here. It was published in 1953 (by coincidence an extremely important year for climate science – Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass made his presentation about the long-term implications of carbon dioxide build-up at the American Geophysical Union in May of that year, and it went ‘viral’). Spoilers ahead: it concerns a family on a vacation trip through the Deep South against the knowledge that there is an escaped – and armed – ‘madman’ on the loose. The family disregard the warnings, fail to do the sensible things and are undone by childish actions (does any of this sound at all familiar?) I am drawing a long bow here, of course. In no reasonable way can this short story be read as “anthropocene fiction” (though doubtless an ambitious honours or Masters student could give it a red-hot try.
Suffice (sic) to say that there comes a point, after an accident, where you can mewl all you like about the unfairness of it all, how it coulda shoulda been different, but whatever you say, you are STILL looking down the barrel of a (literal, in the story) gun, and that is all there is too it, possible moments of grace or not aside. It is what it is.
Next week, I will somehow find a way to editorialise on the book I just bought in the charity shop – the Jungle Book (“Do you like Kipling?” “I don’t know, I’ve never kippled…”)
Well,thisis exciting…
LINK. Short version seems to be “don’t be surprised if Godzilla doesn’t come back more regularly, bringing his friends.”
The three phases of ElNiño
The Antici…pation
From early this year until … (looks at watch)… about now. Scientists saying they’ve double-checked and triple-checked and they’re as sure as they can be. Disaster management folks pleading for money and decent plans. Politicians telling us to stock up, or declaring States of Emergency in advance, with an eye on their 2028 Presidential run… Journalists writing SEO-ed disaster porn speculations. Everyone holding their breath, putting their fingers in their ears to not hear the Doomers gloating “I told you so.”
“Then someone yelled out ‘Contact!’”
The rolling roiling disasters, especially salient when (rich) White People in Peril can be filmed. The shark in the shopping mall meme resurfaces. The re-insurers point to their fine print, and some insurers go belly-up. The rich libertarians squeal for state bail-outs. Food prices through the roof. Hard-to-replace infrastructure washed away.
Back to the perfect paradise
The wreckage is quietly swept away, the global machine reboots, and the important (rich white) people continue their merry way. The End. (Actual outcomes may vary; always read the label).
Colour Me Amazed
Or “Ocean Colour Scream”…
“Monthly SSTs for September were more than 3°C above average across the central and equatorial Pacific, including much of the Nino 3.4 region. The largest anomalies occurred farther east along the Peruvian coast and west of the Galápagos, reaching 6–7°C above average in those areas.”
In these dark days man tends to look for little shafts of light that spill from Heaven…. So I propose to share tiny flashes that have illuminated my sombre life and… have a joke per issue, as far as possible, El Niño or weather-themed.
What do you call a woman who sits at her kitchen table setting fire to her bills, IOUs and council tax demand?
Answer on the last page of this issue.
Welcome to the 5th of at least 7 weekly issues of the ElNiño Digest Times (END Times – geddit?). The why should be self-explanatory, but here’s a FAQ just in case. We are still just about in the first of the three phases of El Niño but not for long…
Here’s the database I’ve begun (but almost certainly will not maintain). It’s largely based on two Google Alerts for “El Niño” and “Impacts” and “Godzilla”. Plus things people (like you) send me.
There are a lot of good El Niño explainers out there – this one, by Al Jazeera is really good and I will link to it at the top of every digest until someone suggests a better one (ideally with the url written on a £50 note).
Editorial
I just today (Saturday 17th) read Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” You can find it online here. It was published in 1953 (by coincidence an extremely important year for climate science – Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass made his presentation about the long-term implications of carbon dioxide build-up at the American Geophysical Union in May of that year, and it went ‘viral’). Spoilers ahead: it concerns a family on a vacation trip through the Deep South against the knowledge that there is an escaped – and armed – ‘madman’ on the loose. The family disregard the warnings, fail to do the sensible things and are undone by childish actions (does any of this sound at all familiar?) I am drawing a long bow here, of course. In no reasonable way can this short story be read as “anthropocene fiction” (though doubtless an ambitious honours or Masters student could give it a red-hot try.
Suffice (sic) to say that there comes a point, after an accident, where you can mewl all you like about the unfairness of it all, how it coulda shoulda been different, but whatever you say, you are STILL looking down the barrel of a (literal, in the story) gun, and that is all there is too it, possible moments of grace or not aside. It is what it is.
Next week, I will somehow find a way to editorialise on the book I just bought in the charity shop – the Jungle Book (“Do you like Kipling?” “I don’t know, I’ve never kippled…”)
Well,thisis exciting…
LINK. Short version seems to be “don’t be surprised if Godzilla doesn’t come back more regularly, bringing his friends.”
The three phases of ElNiño
The Antici…pation
From early this year until … (looks at watch)… about now. Scientists saying they’ve double-checked and triple-checked and they’re as sure as they can be. Disaster management folks pleading for money and decent plans. Politicians telling us to stock up, or declaring States of Emergency in advance, with an eye on their 2028 Presidential run… Journalists writing SEO-ed disaster porn speculations. Everyone holding their breath, putting their fingers in their ears to not hear the Doomers gloating “I told you so.”
“Then someone yelled out ‘Contact!’”
The rolling roiling disasters, especially salient when (rich) White People in Peril can be filmed. The shark in the shopping mall meme resurfaces. The re-insurers point to their fine print, and some insurers go belly-up. The rich libertarians squeal for state bail-outs. Food prices through the roof. Hard-to-replace infrastructure washed away.
Back to the perfect paradise
The wreckage is quietly swept away, the global machine reboots, and the important (rich white) people continue their merry way. The End. (Actual outcomes may vary; always read the label).
Quotes of the Week
El Niño’s added ocean heat affects the atmosphere, causing weather patterns around the world to shift. Consider it kind of like a domino run, where one tile starts a chain reaction. Such a major slug of heat in the Pacific will act more like a shove then a light flick on the atmosphere, and the resulting shifts in weather are expected to be generationally intense.
“Since September 20th, when Odalys formed, it’s been berserk,” said Colorado State University researcher Phil Klotzbach, who forecasts and studies storm activity. “This year just everything that forms is just lasting a long time and getting really powerful.”
“For children, El Niño is far more than a weather pattern. It can mean increased displacement, malnutrition, water shortages, and disease outbreaks. Children are also at risk of schools closing, while families could experience added financial hardship,” Catherine Russell, who heads the agency, said.
“Most of us climate change ecology people are kind of perversely excited about it,” says John Bruno, a marine ecologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “It’s an experimental treatment that nature is providing to us.”
Whether this “super” El Niño will translate into superdamage around the world remains to be seen. Other ocean phenomena, such as water temperatures in the Indian Ocean, can either moderate or amplify an El Niño’s effects, says Chris Funk, an applied climatologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara whose work focuses on developing weather forecasting tools to predict drought, famine, and other natural disasters. He says the indicators so far point to a wild ride for people and ecosystems. “The pretty obvious conclusion is that we should buckle up.”
Ian Lisk, a chief meteorologist at the Met Office, warned attendees of a recent Airports UK annual conference that “we don’t get normal weather any more, fundamentally…. None of this is good news. The heatwaves and the events of this last summer had nothing to do with El Niño.”
“If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that’s something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can’t live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organizations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.”
Noam Chomsky
Money
(always the 5th element, whatever Aristotle thought)
“Developing countries face a triple shock from the energy crisis, El Niño and surging borrowing costs and need urgent support from the international community, the UN’s development arm has warned.
“Speaking before the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok this week, the UNDP’s administrator, Alexander De Croo, called for “solidarity and global action”.
“Developing countries, their hands and legs are being pulled in different directions: it’s truly hard for them,” he said.
“Before the meetings, the UNDP published a report, No Time to Recover, which lays out the risks of what it calls the “compounding crises” of energy, climate and debt.”
“BANGKOK — The Philippine central bank is planning for a “Godzilla” El Niño on top of a prolonged oil shock, as the Southeast Asian nation tries to rein in inflation from three-year highs.
Governor Eli Remolona said Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas now sets policy using scenarios that factor in oil prices and the severity of the weather event. “We have the regular, ordinary El Niño, which is bad, and then we have the Godzilla El Niño, which is really, really bad,” he said Wednesday on a panel at the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok.”
“The arrival of the 2026/27 El Niño brings renewed uncertainty to Brazil’s agricultural sector, with regional impacts varying widely. Central and Northern areas face higher risks of heatwaves and below-average rainfall, while the South is bracing for excessive precipitation. These shifts threaten to disrupt planting schedules for soybeans and second-season corn, reduce water availability for pastures, and strain livestock welfare. High temperatures may also jeopardize critical coffee and orange flowering periods as well as sugarcane yields. In response, Brazilian producers should be prepared for elevated input costs, rising insurance premiums, and recurring infrastructure vulnerabilities associated with severe weather events. These financial impacts may have lasting effects well into future harvests, heightening the strain on Brazil’s agricultural sector.”
Brazil: Bracing for Impact – How the 2026 El Nino Affects Brazil’s Agriculture Attaché Report (GAIN) | BR2026-0040
“In this paper I use a new approach to estimating the impulse response functions of El Niños. I find that El Niños pose material upside risk for PCE prices and employment. The longer-run price effects are driven by core services and food prices and depend on whether La Niñas follow El Niños, a very common occurrence. After modest offsetting initial effects, employment increases are widespread in terms of both sectors and states in the year following the El Niño. These results indicate El Niños can have material impacts on the US.”
Roth Tran, Brigitte 2026. “In Hot Water? The Macroeconomic Impacts of El Niño.” Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Working Paper 2026-21. https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2026-21
Don’t go visiting waterfalls…
“Heavy rainfall fuelled by a supersized El Niño weather pattern briefly forced Argentinian authorities to close tourist access to the famed Iguazu Falls, amid fears that rapidly rising water levels would cause the river to burst its banks.”
The effects are already being felt. In Somalia, heavy rains have flooded parts of Mogadishu and damaged health facilities, echoing the El Niño-linked floods of 2023 that displaced 1.2 million people.
PETALING JAYA: The meteorological department has forecast scorching weather between March and May next year due to the Super El Nino phenomenon, potentially breaking Malaysia’s record high temperature of 40.1 degrees Celsius.
Its director-general Hisham Anip said Malaysia’s maximum temperature could exceed 41 degrees Celsius based on an analysis of the current El Nino phenomenon, alongside the impacts of climate change and global warming.
“If we look at current climate change trends, the rate of temperature increase in the country is approximately 0.13 degrees Celsius per decade.
The degree of difficulties may vary between states, but the fact that around 40 per cent of India’s landmass spread over 15 of the 36 states and Union Territories received less than normal rainfall will remain a matter of concern…
“India is well placed with its foodgrain stocks — a massive pool of 602 lakh metric tonnes of wheat and rice — three times the prescribed buffer stock. Food will not be a problem even if India experiences a rare second successive failure of SWM season in 202, as a section of meteorologists fear. India’s real problem is drinking water supply in states that ended up with serious deficit rains and irrigation for agriculture.”
International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva told AFP she is “very concerned” about El Niño’s global impacts, particularly on food security. The IMF is “getting ready” to offer support to countries that may struggle to absorb the impact, she added. The United Nations Development Programme also warned Sunday that the combined impacts of higher borrowing costs, surging energy prices and the powerful El Niño created “a perfect storm that could throw tens if not hundreds of millions of people back into poverty.”
Londoners are being urged to sign up for flood warnings amid growing concern that extreme weather fuelled by a “Godzilla” El Niño will batter the UK this winter.
Flood action online is designed as a one-stop shop for people to understand the flood risk to their homes and take action to reduce it, as well as providing easy access to weather alerts from the Met Office during incidents.
Up to 1.7 million UK households will not turn on their heating this winter in an effort to save money – as a record El Niño threatens to unleash extreme weather this winter.
A poll for Uswitch suggested that as many as 1.7 million households will turn off their heating to save money on costs, with only 40% planning to turn it on if they get too cold.
“Colder, calmer weather in UK winters is known to present a challenge for energy production from renewable sources, especially when it is also cloudy. Wind power generates 40% or more of the UK’s electricity during winter, and cold, calm periods can require more gas power to make up for lower wind generation and increased demand for heating.”
UK weather tends to be less directly affected than other areas of the world, but due to the strength of this El Niño the extent of the forecasts suggest there is an increased likelihood of wetter and stormier conditions during autumn and early winter, alongside a slightly increased risk of colder weather and cold snaps later in winter.
What’s likely around the winter peak from October to December 2026:
Increased likelihood of stormier conditions
Increased likelihood of heavy rainfall and flooding
Early 2027:
Slightly increased likelihood of ‘cold snaps’
In the UK this could cause:
Flooding
Power cuts
Damage by high winds
Snow and icy conditions
These events are something the UK experiences every year. While El Niño does not directly cause individual storms, floods or cold weather events, forecasts suggest it could increase the likelihood of some weather patterns that make these impacts more likely.
With around 50% of UK food imported, including 80% of fruit and vegetables from countries such as Spain and Morocco, supply could be impacted by events in countries of origin, which would have a knock-on effect for UK shoppers of driving up prices and scarcity. This is especially true for foods that can only be grown and cultivated in certain areas of the world.
“We are a long way behind in terms of what is needed for adaptation as a country. The very hot summer we have just had has alerted people to what has been coming for a long time. It is going to get worse than this,”
James Richardson, the chief analyst at the Climate Change Committee
Not long ago the idea of a book on Amazon forest fires would have seemed as absurd as a book on Amazon snowstorms, according to Erika Berenguer, a senior research associate in Oxford University and Lancaster University and an expert on human-driven disturbances in the world’s biggest tropical forest. “Fires just didn’t happen before because the forest was too humid,” she explains.
But decades of deforestation and climate disruption have changed that completely. Swathes of the Amazon are now drier and more flammable, particularly in El Niño years which are associated with lower rainfall.
Synopsis: Every Tuesday, we discuss how environmental issues intersect with business, politics and society.
After three years of clear skies, the haze is back in Singapore. One contributor to the pollution is the El Nino weather phenomenon, which causes drier, hotter weather in South-east Asia.
Science Talk: In this episode of Science Talk podcast, we sit down with Dr. Zeke Hausfather (https://thebreakthrough.org/people/ze…, a leading climate scientist known for translating complex data into clear, accessible insights. While not a “typical academic,” he holds a PhD and has played a major role in advancing public understanding of climate science. He is currently affiliated with Berkeley Earth (https://berkeleyearth.org/team/) and is also working in the private sector on carbon removal solutions.
This wide-ranging conversation tackles some of the most urgent and debated questions about our planet’s future. What exactly is happening to Earth’s climate—and why? Do we now have enough evidence to definitively prove that climate change is real? We also explore the growing discussion around whether 2027 could become the warmest year on record, especially in the context of a potential Super El Niño.
I am not a climate scientist. I am mostly collating what other people say, not pushing my own “angle”. I will get things wrong – when I do, I’ll fess up, no fuss. I will quote from “reputable” sources, but sometimes the truth is an outlandish outlier.
Blah blah information provided for lulz only. No responsibility taken for your failure to create broad-based social movements that prevent shit getting even worse and instead leading us into the pit of Sarlac.
The digest is inspired by the awe-inspiring and heart-breaking “CO2 Newsletter published by American geologist William Barbat from 1979 to 1982.
That joke!
Bernadette! Ba-doom, tish.
What do you call a hairless murder ape using its opposable thumbs to dig up coal and set fire to it?
3. What is “Drilled”, how did it come to be and why should everyone listen to it?
Drilled started out as a true-crime podcast about climate change and is now a global newsroom producing both the podcast and cross-border investigations into climate obstruction with a wide range of partner outlets.
It started out because I had been a longtime climate reporter in print and was wishing I could do radio and then thought well I probably could if I learned how, so had gone to work for a radio station. They had trained me in audio reporting, but I was still working as a climate reporter, at the time mostly for The Guardian where I worked on retainer for several years. There was a bit of a narrative podcast boom at the time, driven primarily by the podcast Serial, and I thought there should be something narrative on climate–only a handful of climate pods existed and they were all interview-based, not stories. But I couldn’t think of something that could carry a whole podcast season either.
Then I got assigned to cover one of the early climate liability cases in California, where the cities of Oakland and San Francisco were suing some of the world’s largest oil companies for their role in delaying action on climate change and thus increasing the costs of adaptation for cities. The judge in that case had called for a climate science tutorial — he was an eccentric guy, known for such things – and both legal teams showed up in San Francisco prepared to present on who knew what, when, and what they’d done with that information. All the characters were there: The eccentric judge, the scientists, the slick oil company lawyers, the activists, and I thought “aha! that’s it, I’ll make a true-crime podcast about climate change.”
At the time, people weren’t really talking about climate as a crime so it was somewhat novel and I thought it was a great idea, but none of the podcast companies were interested. They all said there wouldn’t be enough of an audience. I was really convinced they were wrong so I made it anyway with an audio engineer friend and a small seed grant from a nonprofit, and we wound up getting a million listens to our first season, so that proved that there was an audience. By that point I had ideas for the next three seasons and now we’re working on Season 18.
4. This book – how did it come to be? What is it trying to achieve? What does it do that other books (Ross Gelbspan, Oreskes and Conway) that have looked at climate propaganda didn’t do?
It had a very circuitous path!… The idea I initially pitched him was a whole book on Herb Schmertz, the legendary VP of public affairs for Mobil, and one of these days I still want to write that book. BUT understandably he thought it was a bit too niche. So we bounced ideas around for about a year and basically co-wrote the proposal for the book. Which is highly unusual! I felt like other books had focused on one particular type of propaganda — science denial or PR or lobbying — but none had looked yet at how it all works together. I also thought there’d been this tendency to frame this issue as though one industry figured this stuff out and then another industry copied it, which didn’t jive with the documentation I’d seen. I think it’s helpful for people to see how this works across industries and how these strategies were really concocted to help all industries and companies avoid regulation and get around democracy in a variety of ways.
6. I’ll give you five minutes with Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Let’s say he’s read your book. What ELSE would you say to him?
I’d tell him to talk to Tessa Kahn of Uplift about why everything he’s said about North Sea oil is wrong
8. Any shout outs to other climate journalism, journalism full stop – people who deserve more attention than they are getting?
Always! Let’s see, well first I want to make sure to shout out all the other reporters working with Drilled – Alleen Brown, Royce Kurmelovs (who is single-handedly producing a massive amount of Australia’s investigative climate journalism), Nina Lakhani, Diana Taremwa-Karakire in Uganda, Rishika Pardikar in India, Alice de Souza an excellent Brazilian journalist living in the UK, Ana Dominguez in Argentina, Jose Catalayud in Spain, Alex Brutelle in France. Then I think the folks at the Intercept Brasil are some of the best journalists around. Sharon Lerner does incredible work at ProPublica. Hilary Beaumont all over the place, Sara Sneath at The Guardian. Kendra Pierre-Louis has been doing amazing climate reporting for years. I know I’m immediately going to kick myself for forgetting someone.
El Niño’s added ocean heat affects the atmosphere, causing weather patterns around the world to shift. Consider it kind of like a domino run, where one tile starts a chain reaction. Such a major slug of heat in the Pacific will act more like a shove then a light flick on the atmosphere, and the resulting shifts in weather are expected to be generationally intense.
“Since September 20th, when Odalys formed, it’s been berserk,” said Colorado State University researcher Phil Klotzbach, who forecasts and studies storm activity. “This year just everything that forms is just lasting a long time and getting really powerful.”
“For children, El Niño is far more than a weather pattern. It can mean increased displacement, malnutrition, water shortages, and disease outbreaks. Children are also at risk of schools closing, while families could experience added financial hardship,” Catherine Russell, who heads the agency, said.
“Most of us climate change ecology people are kind of perversely excited about it,” says John Bruno, a marine ecologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “It’s an experimental treatment that nature is providing to us.”
Whether this “super” El Niño will translate into superdamage around the world remains to be seen. Other ocean phenomena, such as water temperatures in the Indian Ocean, can either moderate or amplify an El Niño’s effects, says Chris Funk, an applied climatologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara whose work focuses on developing weather forecasting tools to predict drought, famine, and other natural disasters. He says the indicators so far point to a wild ride for people and ecosystems. “The pretty obvious conclusion is that we should buckle up.”
Ian Lisk, a chief meteorologist at the Met Office, warned attendees of a recent Airports UK annual conference that “we don’t get normal weather any more, fundamentally…. None of this is good news. The heatwaves and the events of this last summer had nothing to do with El Niño.”
“If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that’s something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can’t live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organizations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.”
Noam Chomsky
Money
(always the 5th element, whatever Aristotle thought)
“Developing countries face a triple shock from the energy crisis, El Niño and surging borrowing costs and need urgent support from the international community, the UN’s development arm has warned.
“Speaking before the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok this week, the UNDP’s administrator, Alexander De Croo, called for “solidarity and global action”.
“Developing countries, their hands and legs are being pulled in different directions: it’s truly hard for them,” he said.
“Before the meetings, the UNDP published a report, No Time to Recover, which lays out the risks of what it calls the “compounding crises” of energy, climate and debt.”
“BANGKOK — The Philippine central bank is planning for a “Godzilla” El Niño on top of a prolonged oil shock, as the Southeast Asian nation tries to rein in inflation from three-year highs.
Governor Eli Remolona said Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas now sets policy using scenarios that factor in oil prices and the severity of the weather event. “We have the regular, ordinary El Niño, which is bad, and then we have the Godzilla El Niño, which is really, really bad,” he said Wednesday on a panel at the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok.”
“The arrival of the 2026/27 El Niño brings renewed uncertainty to Brazil’s agricultural sector, with regional impacts varying widely. Central and Northern areas face higher risks of heatwaves and below-average rainfall, while the South is bracing for excessive precipitation. These shifts threaten to disrupt planting schedules for soybeans and second-season corn, reduce water availability for pastures, and strain livestock welfare. High temperatures may also jeopardize critical coffee and orange flowering periods as well as sugarcane yields. In response, Brazilian producers should be prepared for elevated input costs, rising insurance premiums, and recurring infrastructure vulnerabilities associated with severe weather events. These financial impacts may have lasting effects well into future harvests, heightening the strain on Brazil’s agricultural sector.”
Brazil: Bracing for Impact – How the 2026 El Nino Affects Brazil’s Agriculture Attaché Report (GAIN) | BR2026-0040
“In this paper I use a new approach to estimating the impulse response functions of El Niños. I find that El Niños pose material upside risk for PCE prices and employment. The longer-run price effects are driven by core services and food prices and depend on whether La Niñas follow El Niños, a very common occurrence. After modest offsetting initial effects, employment increases are widespread in terms of both sectors and states in the year following the El Niño. These results indicate El Niños can have material impacts on the US.”
Roth Tran, Brigitte 2026. “In Hot Water? The Macroeconomic Impacts of El Niño.” Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Working Paper 2026-21. https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2026-21
Don’t go visiting waterfalls…
“Heavy rainfall fuelled by a supersized El Niño weather pattern briefly forced Argentinian authorities to close tourist access to the famed Iguazu Falls, amid fears that rapidly rising water levels would cause the river to burst its banks.”
The effects are already being felt. In Somalia, heavy rains have flooded parts of Mogadishu and damaged health facilities, echoing the El Niño-linked floods of 2023 that displaced 1.2 million people.
PETALING JAYA: The meteorological department has forecast scorching weather between March and May next year due to the Super El Nino phenomenon, potentially breaking Malaysia’s record high temperature of 40.1 degrees Celsius.
Its director-general Hisham Anip said Malaysia’s maximum temperature could exceed 41 degrees Celsius based on an analysis of the current El Nino phenomenon, alongside the impacts of climate change and global warming.
“If we look at current climate change trends, the rate of temperature increase in the country is approximately 0.13 degrees Celsius per decade.
The degree of difficulties may vary between states, but the fact that around 40 per cent of India’s landmass spread over 15 of the 36 states and Union Territories received less than normal rainfall will remain a matter of concern…
“India is well placed with its foodgrain stocks — a massive pool of 602 lakh metric tonnes of wheat and rice — three times the prescribed buffer stock. Food will not be a problem even if India experiences a rare second successive failure of SWM season in 202, as a section of meteorologists fear. India’s real problem is drinking water supply in states that ended up with serious deficit rains and irrigation for agriculture.”
International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva told AFP she is “very concerned” about El Niño’s global impacts, particularly on food security. The IMF is “getting ready” to offer support to countries that may struggle to absorb the impact, she added. The United Nations Development Programme also warned Sunday that the combined impacts of higher borrowing costs, surging energy prices and the powerful El Niño created “a perfect storm that could throw tens if not hundreds of millions of people back into poverty.”
Londoners are being urged to sign up for flood warnings amid growing concern that extreme weather fuelled by a “Godzilla” El Niño will batter the UK this winter.
Flood action online is designed as a one-stop shop for people to understand the flood risk to their homes and take action to reduce it, as well as providing easy access to weather alerts from the Met Office during incidents.
Up to 1.7 million UK households will not turn on their heating this winter in an effort to save money – as a record El Niño threatens to unleash extreme weather this winter.
A poll for Uswitch suggested that as many as 1.7 million households will turn off their heating to save money on costs, with only 40% planning to turn it on if they get too cold.
“Colder, calmer weather in UK winters is known to present a challenge for energy production from renewable sources, especially when it is also cloudy. Wind power generates 40% or more of the UK’s electricity during winter, and cold, calm periods can require more gas power to make up for lower wind generation and increased demand for heating.”
UK weather tends to be less directly affected than other areas of the world, but due to the strength of this El Niño the extent of the forecasts suggest there is an increased likelihood of wetter and stormier conditions during autumn and early winter, alongside a slightly increased risk of colder weather and cold snaps later in winter.
What’s likely around the winter peak from October to December 2026:
Increased likelihood of stormier conditions
Increased likelihood of heavy rainfall and flooding
Early 2027:
Slightly increased likelihood of ‘cold snaps’
In the UK this could cause:
Flooding
Power cuts
Damage by high winds
Snow and icy conditions
These events are something the UK experiences every year. While El Niño does not directly cause individual storms, floods or cold weather events, forecasts suggest it could increase the likelihood of some weather patterns that make these impacts more likely.
With around 50% of UK food imported, including 80% of fruit and vegetables from countries such as Spain and Morocco, supply could be impacted by events in countries of origin, which would have a knock-on effect for UK shoppers of driving up prices and scarcity. This is especially true for foods that can only be grown and cultivated in certain areas of the world.
“We are a long way behind in terms of what is needed for adaptation as a country. The very hot summer we have just had has alerted people to what has been coming for a long time. It is going to get worse than this,”
James Richardson, the chief analyst at the Climate Change Committee
Not long ago the idea of a book on Amazon forest fires would have seemed as absurd as a book on Amazon snowstorms, according to Erika Berenguer, a senior research associate in Oxford University and Lancaster University and an expert on human-driven disturbances in the world’s biggest tropical forest. “Fires just didn’t happen before because the forest was too humid,” she explains.
But decades of deforestation and climate disruption have changed that completely. Swathes of the Amazon are now drier and more flammable, particularly in El Niño years which are associated with lower rainfall.
Synopsis: Every Tuesday, we discuss how environmental issues intersect with business, politics and society.
After three years of clear skies, the haze is back in Singapore. One contributor to the pollution is the El Nino weather phenomenon, which causes drier, hotter weather in South-east Asia.
Science Talk: In this episode of Science Talk podcast, we sit down with Dr. Zeke Hausfather (https://thebreakthrough.org/people/ze…, a leading climate scientist known for translating complex data into clear, accessible insights. While not a “typical academic,” he holds a PhD and has played a major role in advancing public understanding of climate science. He is currently affiliated with Berkeley Earth (https://berkeleyearth.org/team/) and is also working in the private sector on carbon removal solutions.
This wide-ranging conversation tackles some of the most urgent and debated questions about our planet’s future. What exactly is happening to Earth’s climate—and why? Do we now have enough evidence to definitively prove that climate change is real? We also explore the growing discussion around whether 2027 could become the warmest year on record, especially in the context of a potential Super El Niño.
I am not a climate scientist. I am mostly collating what other people say, not pushing my own “angle”. I will get things wrong – when I do, I’ll fess up, no fuss. I will quote from “reputable” sources, but sometimes the truth is an outlandish outlier.
Blah blah information provided for lulz only. No responsibility taken for your failure to create broad-based social movements that prevent shit getting even worse and instead leading us into the pit of Sarlac.
The digest is inspired by the awe-inspiring and heart-breaking “CO2 Newsletter published by American geologist William Barbat from 1979 to 1982.
That joke!
Bernadette! Ba-doom, tish.
What do you call a hairless murder ape using its opposable thumbs to dig up coal and set fire to it?
3. What is “Drilled”, how did it come to be and why should everyone listen to it?
Drilled started out as a true-crime podcast about climate change and is now a global newsroom producing both the podcast and cross-border investigations into climate obstruction with a wide range of partner outlets.
It started out because I had been a longtime climate reporter in print and was wishing I could do radio and then thought well I probably could if I learned how, so had gone to work for a radio station. They had trained me in audio reporting, but I was still working as a climate reporter, at the time mostly for The Guardian where I worked on retainer for several years. There was a bit of a narrative podcast boom at the time, driven primarily by the podcast Serial, and I thought there should be something narrative on climate–only a handful of climate pods existed and they were all interview-based, not stories. But I couldn’t think of something that could carry a whole podcast season either.
Then I got assigned to cover one of the early climate liability cases in California, where the cities of Oakland and San Francisco were suing some of the world’s largest oil companies for their role in delaying action on climate change and thus increasing the costs of adaptation for cities. The judge in that case had called for a climate science tutorial — he was an eccentric guy, known for such things – and both legal teams showed up in San Francisco prepared to present on who knew what, when, and what they’d done with that information. All the characters were there: The eccentric judge, the scientists, the slick oil company lawyers, the activists, and I thought “aha! that’s it, I’ll make a true-crime podcast about climate change.”
At the time, people weren’t really talking about climate as a crime so it was somewhat novel and I thought it was a great idea, but none of the podcast companies were interested. They all said there wouldn’t be enough of an audience. I was really convinced they were wrong so I made it anyway with an audio engineer friend and a small seed grant from a nonprofit, and we wound up getting a million listens to our first season, so that proved that there was an audience. By that point I had ideas for the next three seasons and now we’re working on Season 18.
4. This book – how did it come to be? What is it trying to achieve? What does it do that other books (Ross Gelbspan, Oreskes and Conway) that have looked at climate propaganda didn’t do?
It had a very circuitous path!… The idea I initially pitched him was a whole book on Herb Schmertz, the legendary VP of public affairs for Mobil, and one of these days I still want to write that book. BUT understandably he thought it was a bit too niche. So we bounced ideas around for about a year and basically co-wrote the proposal for the book. Which is highly unusual! I felt like other books had focused on one particular type of propaganda — science denial or PR or lobbying — but none had looked yet at how it all works together. I also thought there’d been this tendency to frame this issue as though one industry figured this stuff out and then another industry copied it, which didn’t jive with the documentation I’d seen. I think it’s helpful for people to see how this works across industries and how these strategies were really concocted to help all industries and companies avoid regulation and get around democracy in a variety of ways.
6. I’ll give you five minutes with Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Let’s say he’s read your book. What ELSE would you say to him?
I’d tell him to talk to Tessa Kahn of Uplift about why everything he’s said about North Sea oil is wrong
8. Any shout outs to other climate journalism, journalism full stop – people who deserve more attention than they are getting?
Always! Let’s see, well first I want to make sure to shout out all the other reporters working with Drilled – Alleen Brown, Royce Kurmelovs (who is single-handedly producing a massive amount of Australia’s investigative climate journalism), Nina Lakhani, Diana Taremwa-Karakire in Uganda, Rishika Pardikar in India, Alice de Souza an excellent Brazilian journalist living in the UK, Ana Dominguez in Argentina, Jose Catalayud in Spain, Alex Brutelle in France. Then I think the folks at the Intercept Brasil are some of the best journalists around. Sharon Lerner does incredible work at ProPublica. Hilary Beaumont all over the place, Sara Sneath at The Guardian. Kendra Pierre-Louis has been doing amazing climate reporting for years. I know I’m immediately going to kick myself for forgetting someone.
This page contains content authorised by a previous Minister of a former Department and is available for archival purposes only.
18 October 2010
Media Release
Joint media release The Hon Wayne Swan MP Deputy Prime Minister, Treasurer
The Government announced today the membership of the new roundtable that has been established to engage the business community on the Government’s climate change policies.
The Roundtable will include business leaders from right across the economy, including major sectors like mining, transport, manufacturing, energy, retail and banking. The Roundtable will also include leading peak bodies, such as the Business Council of Australia, AI Group and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
This new Roundtable will play a critical role in providing advice to the Government on the economic and business issues surrounding climate change.
The introduction of a carbon price will reshape the business environment for all Australian companies, providing businesses with the certainty they need to begin the transition to a low pollution economy. This new Roundtable will ensure that the views of the business community are front and centre as we progress this important economic reform.
Business leaders around the country understand that if we are to remain internationally competitive over the long term, then our industries must become less carbon intensive. The best way of doing this is by establishing a carbon price in the economy.
The simple fact is that in order to promote business certainty and to underscore Australia’s long-term competitiveness, introducing a carbon price is the only economically responsible thing to do.
The roundtable will also discuss how the Government’s climate change policies intersect with our other economic policies, including tax reform.
The Roundtable will be co-chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer, Wayne Swan, and the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Greg Combet. The Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, will also be a member.
The composition of the roundtable reflects extensive discussion with business leaders and peak bodies. To keep the Roundtable to a manageable size, the Government has not been able to accommodate all interested parties. Ministers will continue to be available to discuss issues with all parties as we develop our policy position.
Member organisations of the Business Roundtable and their representatives include:
Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Peter Anderson
Lend Lease, Maria Atkinson
National Australia Bank, Cameron Clyne
BHP Billiton, Hubrecht (Hubie) van Dalsen
Investor Group, Nathan Fabian
National Farmers’ Federation, Ben Fargher
AGL Energy, Michael Fraser
Qantas, Alan Joyce
Origin, Grant King
Woolworths, Michael Luscombe
BlueScope Steel, Paul O’Malley
Energy Supply Association of Australia, Brad Page
Rio Tinto, David Peever
Shell, Ann Pickard
Australian Industry Group, Heather Ridout
Business Council of Australia, Maria Tarrant
Woodside, Don Voelte
Clean Energy Council, Matthew Warren
Toyota, Masahide (Max) Yasuda
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 337ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that the ALP had spent a chunk of the 2000s trying to turn climate change into an issue they could use to peel away voters from the Liberals under Prime Minister John Howard. In late 2006 their luck had changed and new leader Kevin Rudd was able to club Howard with the issue. Rudd had then absolutely destroyed his credibility, and – fatally – allowed his chief of staff to brief against Julia Gillard, his Deputy. Gillard finally snapped and Rudd slunk away without even a vote (he knew he’d be hammered). Gillard had then called a slightly-early Federal election.
The specific context – Gillard managed to promise “no Carbon Tax” in the last days of the campaign. Then, oops, didn’t win a majority and so needed the support of Independent MPs to form a government. And those who were up for supporting her wanted… a carbon price. Which would be hard to distinguish from a “carbon tax.” (It probably COULD have been done, but, well, for reasons, it didn’t happen). So here we see Gillard trying to get business on board…
What I think we can learn from this is that business will turn up for a “grip and grin” but will basically play dead if things get too hot around a policy issue, as they did the following year, when Tony Abbott, Liberal leader, launched his “great big tax on everything” campaign.
What happened next 2011 was a blood bath. Gillard got her legislation through, but it was a very Pyrrhic victory.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
Xx
References
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Seventy two years ago, on this day, October 17th, 1954,
According to Ginsberg’s bibliographer and archivist Bill Morgan, it was a terrifying peyote vision that was the principal inspiration for Howl. This occurred on the evening of October 17, 1954, in the Nob Hill apartment of Sheila Williams, Ginsberg’s girlfriend at that time, with whom he was living. Ginsberg had the terrifying experience of seeing the façade of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in the San Francisco fog as the monstrous face of a child-eating demon. As was his wont, Ginsberg took notes on his vision, and these became the basis for Part II of the poem.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 313ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was the so-called McCarthyite terror of the late 40s and early 50s. It actually predates and postdates McCarthy (he was just a useful avatar) and had rendered the United States an even more conformist and authoritarian place than previously (see also the immediate aftermath of World War One) and people like Allen Ginsberg were trying to find a way of thinking and being and doing that didn’t end up with them capitulating and lobotomizing themselves. This also involved drugs.
What I think we can learn from this is that Howl came from drugs. This will come as a shock to you, I am sure.
What happened next Howl was an enormous success of sensation, and it made Ginsberg’s name. Hey, in 1967 Ginsburg was in London and got switched on to the climate issue, carbon dioxide build up, and in a letter to Gary Snyder referred to it as a general lemming situation.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
Xx
References
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 310.5ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that in 1938 British steam engineer Guy Callendar had presented his paper at the Royal Meteorological Society in London, and received a fairly lukewarm response.
Thespecificcontext was his proposition – that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were rising thanks to humans burning coal, and this was already causing an identifiable warming – gained the attention of biologists and ecologists as well as meteorologists (the carbon cycle is kinda important, so changes in the amount of carbon – in air or water – matter).
What I think we can learn from this – we need to look for awareness of carbon dioxide build-up NOT JUST among the meteorologists, but also among the ecologists, biologists, oceanographers etc.
What happened next – Hutchinson was a big-wig in the Conservation Foundation (not yet created) and it was on his suggestion that the Conservation Foundation held its meeting in March 1963
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
Xx
References
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Forty five years ago, on this day, October 16th, 1981, the Financial Times reports on a warning by chief scientist of the Department of Energy, Hermann Bondi, about anti-nuclear protests and protestors.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 339ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that the chief scientist at the Department of Energy, Herman Bondi, was very well aware of carbon dioxide build up, and didn’t want it to be a public issue per se. And he also wanted to try to win debates with the anti-nuclear crowd, and so here we see him reaching for the standard “you want black people to starve line,” which is pushed it out all the fucking time.
What I think we can learn from this – concern for the poor of the world is a tried and tested rhetorical flourish, from people who almost certainly do not give a rat’s arse.
What happened next ? Nuclear for dealing with greenhouse gas became a talking point again in 1988-89 and it’s still there to this day.
xxx
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
Xx
References
xx
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Serene Doomer (Bsky here) responds to Vol 3. no 2 of William Barbat’s astonishing CO2 Newsletter, which you can read here.
It’s a curious thing, to look back 44 years. Compared to today, climate science was flying blind. Satellite technology was advancing – Lansat 4 was launched in July 1982, and the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) used on NOAA’s polar orbiting satellites became standardised around this time. Datasets were patchy, and biased towards the Northern Hemisphere; and rudimentary computer models predicted the future with limited accuracy. The knowledge gap was seen as the main barrier to action. It wasn’t unreasonable to think that mankind was sensible enough to save itself, once the existential threat was seen clearly enough. William Barbat’s bi-monthly newsletters attempted to bring the ‘CO₂-greenhouse problem‘ into sharper focus.
The Jan-Feb 1982 edition of the CO₂ Newsletter, Volume 3 No 2, led with ‘Accelerating sea level rise is attributed to climate change‘ (yes, deniers, that phrase was used back then). Etkins & Epstein’s research established that there had been a 120 mm sea level rise, which could not be accounted for by thermal ocean expansion. They calculated that 50,000 km³ of polar ice must have been discharged over the previous 40 years. They also noted that this movement of weight would retard the Earth’s rotation; and surmised that it explained around 75% of the reduction in angular velocity that had been observed.
The editorial in Vol 3, No 2 highlighted the proposed cut in funding of the Department of Energy’s CO₂-greenhouse research program, from $12 million in 1982, to $8 million in 1983, and the impact that this would have on climate science:
“Our greatest concern is that acquisition of hard scientific data has been for years – and still is – far too slow to convince the remaining skeptics of the reality and imminence of CO₂ impacts in a timely manner.”
From our vantage point in the age of information, misinformation, and disinformation, we now know that a wealth of data is insufficient to change minds hardened by fossil fuel propaganda. Even a 99% agreement among climate scientists is insufficient to persuade people to give up the luxuries and conveniences that are hammering nails into humanity’s coffin. The following statement was true then, and is true now:
“For perspective, the CO2-greenhouse problem, the acid-rain problem, and most of the air-pollution problems all have a common source: fossil fuels. These problems also share a common remedy: supplant fossil fuels.”
The newsletter presents extracts from recent reports, including the horrifying news that climate change could benefit Russian agriculture, while having the opposite effect in the US. What a shame this prospect wasn’t enough to move policymakers.
From “Greenhouse effect’ scenario: U.S. to suffer, Russia to thrive”, unsigned article in ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS (Denver, CO) January 14, 1982:
“Russell E. Train, president of the World Wildlife Fund -U.S., said present rates of growth in the global use of coal and other fossil fuels could cause the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to double by 2050. “This could increase average global temperatures by about 2 degrees centigrade, ‘with progressively greater increases as you move toward the poles,’ said Train, a former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator.
“He said the warmer climate would mean ‘a marked improvement’ in agriculture in northern areas of the Soviet Union, where farming is marginal.
“On the other hand, the rich grain belt of the United States would find temperatures rising about 5 degrees centigrade, ‘with an accompanying sharp reduction in rainfall,’ Train told a Joint Economic Committee hearing on the role of coal in revitalizing the economy.”
“Since burning coal gives off considerably more carbon dioxide than oil or natural gas, Train suggested it might not be a good idea to let ‘world economies become “hooked” on the use of coal. . .”
Barbat reviews a book by British astronomer and science writer, John Gribbin, published in 1981:
From ‘Carbon dioxide, Climate and Man’, by John Gribbin
Gribbin sets out the basics: more CO₂ in the atmosphere means a warmer planet; fossil fuels are the main source of CO₂, with cutting and burning forests as a secondary source; emissions will increase going forward. The Mauna Loa observatory had started measuring atmospheric CO₂ in 1958, and a rise from 315ppm to 335ppm had been noted since around then – an increase of 6%. Gribbin estimated a total rise since 1860 of between 14% and 25%. Gribbin suggests that atmospheric CO₂ would double by 2030, which would result in global temperature increases of around 2°C above the pre-industrial baseline, and possibly as high as 5°C, according to the crude and inaccurate computer models of the day.
Gribbin recognised that global warming would not be evenly distributed, and acknowledged that this would negatively impact developed countries’ harvests – but he concluded that rice yields in ‘Third World’ nations would probably increase. In fact, he was concerned that this may be a barrier to effective action:
“International agreement on action to control CO₂ is unlikely, because while the US is in favor of action, Europe is not enthusiastic, the USSR is unconvinced, and the Third World might see itself benefitting from a warmer earth…”
Gribbin acknowledges that a reduction in fossil fuel burning would reduce emissions, and nods to renewable energy, stating: “irrevocable commitments to new fossil fuel programmes should not be made – in the developed world at least…” If only we had heeded that!
From “Two Views on the Carbon-Dioxide Problem’, TECHNOLOGY REVIEW November/December 1981:
The uncertainty of effects is touched upon in ‘Reduction at the Source’, Scroggin & Harris. Arguments against reducing fossil fuel use include the fact that “some scientists believe it may already be too late to avoid significant climatic changes” a view the authors deem as too pessimistic, as it overlooks human resourcefulness. They recognise that policy makers are unlikely to act until the effects are visible – and that, once the effects are visible, it may be too late to reverse:
“Thus, the policymaker’s dilemma is that when the ‘signal’ announcing the gradual global warming from CO₂ is finally identified, the pattern of change will already be well establish- ed. It may then be too late to prevent continued climatic change, even if the countries of the world agree to try…”
Indeed! The good sense of reversing direction sooner, rather than later, is further discussed. Gradual phaseouts are easier for society and the economy to absorb. But this pesky distraction of winners and losers persists:
“. . . Some nations may benefit from the new climate and be understandably reluctant to cooperate in a global effort to reduce CO₂ emissions – particularly if the ‘winner’ nation is a developing country that plans to expand its per capita energy consumption…”
It’s worth noting how pervasive this idea has been. BBC Bitesize – which produces material aimed at schoolchildren – only removed their section on the positive impacts of climate change in July 2021. World leaders are currently threatening to invade territories they deem will be ‘winners’. The reality is that there will be no winners, not in the long run.
The second view is from an economist. ‘A More feasible Social Response’, by Lester B Lave. Lave expected that the effects on the climate would not be measurable until around 2000, and believed no nation would be convinced to address climate change before that time. He terms this a recognition lag. A second, solutions lag would come in deciding whether or not to take action to reduce emissions, once the effects were noticeable: “some nations who stand to gain from climatic change might actuallyencouragefossil-fuel burning”. A third, logistical lag would come if the world actually did decide that reducing emissions was a good idea.
Lave thought we should just forget the whole reducing emissions thing, and concentrate on adaptation: “… Thus, if society is to do something about this potential problem, the emphasis should be on adapting to it…” Lave hoped that the CO₂ problem would be, “a catalyst-for enhancing society’s ability to adapt to and exploit a changing environment…” Well, there’s plenty of exploitation, anyway.
Misconceptions about how the uneven warming would manifest reveal themselves in the article, ‘Will the changes be unbearable?’ by Ellen Ruppel Shell, senior editor of Technology Review. She quotes professor Robert Watts:
“…Watts adds that all models have shown that a two-to- three-degree increase in world temperatures is ‘inevitable if we continue to burn fossil fuels at our present rate.’… Scientists predict that the most serious effect would be change in rainfall patterns that could turn northern Canada into a very lush farm area, while rendering the American prairies as dry as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The further an area is from the equator, the more its temperature will rise – a 2°C global increase would result in about a 7°C increase near the poles. Hence, the melting of glacial ice and the subsequent flooding of coastal cities is far from impossible. “
Early computer models fell victim to the Symmetry Mistake, which assumed equal warming at both poles. As the Antarctic has more land ice, the observed sea level rises have been less severe than projected. To date. So much is still unknown about where these temperature rises will take us.
“During the Ice Age the earth was only 2 ½ °C cooler than it is today,’ Watts says. ‘If temperatures increase by 2°, it will be warmer than it’s been for thousands of years and there’s no telling what will happen.’”
And even if we could accurately model what +2°, +3°, +4°… would look like, would governments or society be motivated to change?
“What can or should be done to prevent CO₂-induced temperature in- creases depends on the amount inconvenience, cost, and setback society is willing to endure.”
Marvin Miller, principle research scientist at MIT, noted that there was no technological fix to inspire a reduction in emissions – whereas recent discoveries of coal reserves tempted mankind in the opposite direction:
“The only way we have of dealing with the problem is to restrict fossil-fuel consumption,’ an act of self-discipline he admits will be particularly difficult in light of the conclusion of the international World Coal Study, published last year, that massive coal reserves in the United States, Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China could serve as the ‘bridge to our energy future’… Miller says models show that if all available coal reserves were burned for fuel, atmospheric CO₂ levels could theoretically go as high as 1200 ppm-a decidedly unhealthy concentration.”
Greg Marland, a geologist from Oak Ridge Laboratory hit the nail on the head with his comment: “We simply can’t stop burning fossil fuels immediately – the economy won’t stand for it,” and recommended further study before any rash decisions were made. Sit tight, and assess.
Finally, under a heading Potential CO₂ problems for U.S. Agriculture, Barbat looks ahead to the ‘Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Plant Productivity‘ conference, which was convening to examine the impact that high levels of CO₂ would have on crop yields, plant biology and ecosystems. The conference was sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Edgar Lemon’s 1983 book, CO₂ and Plants: The Response of Plants to Rising Levels of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide was written from the findings of this conference.
Barbat acknowledges the fact that climatic changes will offset any fertilization advantages, and turns his mind back to the 1930s dust bowl conditions. He suggests that changes in precipitation could shift the wheat belt northward to Canada (hey, perhaps Canada could become the 51st state of America, to counter this!), bring drier conditions around the Great Valley of California, and reduce the run-off from the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
He points to research from two of the early harbingers of the climate crisis, Roger Revelle and Hermann Flohn. Flohn expected a doubling of pre-industrial CO₂ levels to occur between 2030 and 2050. Revelle used this to theorise about the effects of high atmospheric CO₂ on the hydrology of southwestern US. He warned that the run-off of the Colorado River could reduce by 50% by the time atmospheric CO₂ had doubled. Flow is currently reduced by 20-33%. We can expect to reach a doubling of pre-industrial levels from around 2050, assuming emissions continue to grow at their current pace. Barbat speculated that, “The whole interior of the U.S. might become arid or semi-arid, with a great loss in production from non-irrigated farms.”
William Barbat died in 2024, aged 93. He lived long enough to know that better data and modelling was no match for the economic forces intent on profiting from the burning of fossil fuels. His attempts get the policymakers to change course were in vain. I’d like to thank him for trying. I can imagine the frustration he must have felt, watching his worst fears materialise.
Fifty five years ago, on this day, October 15th, 1971, an Australian newspaper reviews “The Greening of America” – a Right Put On?
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 326ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that the civil rights movement had begun with “let’s treat black people as if they were human beings”, and then that had ramified to ”let’s not kill Vietnamese people, and gosh, let’s treat women and homosexuals as if they’re human beings.” Radical, eh? And then from the late 60s this had led on to there’s this thing called ecology, and we should probably watch out for it, and the book industry was hoping to make money and so therefore the bookshelves were full of various tracts, and a runaway bestseller among them was The Greening of America by Charles Reich. Had a picture of Nixon tinged green. And this the hardcover cover
This sounds ridiculous 50 years later, but you have to remember that shortly after Nixon was inaugurated, the Santa Barbara oil spill had happened, and Nixon started bleating about how important it was, and this is the last decade to do anything, do or die, blah blah blah.
Thespecificcontext was that Reich’s book was selling in Australia too.
What I think we can learn from this is that long-forgotten books seemed very important at the time.
What happened next. Reader… America was not greened. Charles Reich made a mea culpa in his book Opposing the System.
And the emissions kept climbing, and the concentrations kept climbing.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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References
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Seventy six years ago, on this day, October 15th, 1950,
Is the world warming up? Dr. Joseph J. Hickey, Professor of Wildlife Management at the University of Wisconsin, holds that it is. He has drawn his evidence from the changing habits of some half-dozen species of mammals …
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 310ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was it was apparent from the 1930s onwards that the world was warming. The warming seemed to be accelerating. No one was quite sure why; sun’s activity, sun spots, orbital wobbles, whatever.
But usually in these circumstances the empirics come first, and then the theories to make a decent picture that fits most of the facts as we know them comes next.
On a cynical level, stories about the weather are always nice eyeball bait/”click bait”.
What I think we can learn from this – the word’s warming was not regarded as particularly controversial (because it wasn’t being pinned on human activity).
What happened nextIn 1953 Gilbert Plass got the carbon dioxide theory originally propounded by Tyndall, Arrhenius and Callendar – and also without people knowing it, Eunice Foote – onto the agenda. By the late 50s, enough people were pretty clear that there could very well be trouble ahead. And here we are, in trouble. Oh, well.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
Xx
References
xx
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
1. Who are you? Where did you grow up and did you have “unstructured minimally/supervised play” in natural settings before the age of 11 (this apparently is a major indicator of adults’ interest/concern for nature). Where were you educated?
Oh wow interesting! I grew up in Ojai, California, which is a super small town in southern California. When I was growing up it was a hippie town, today it’s sort of a Hollywood weekend town so very different vibes. I did have a lot of unstructured play in natural settings as a kid, esp once we moved out of town and up into the mountains when I was about 9. In the summer and on weekends my mom would send my brother and I out of the house around 8 and expect us to be out wandering around the mountain til dinner. I have a twin brother and there were a couple of neighbor kids who were also brother and sister around the same as us with parents equally disinterested in supervising their kids lol. It was a lot of fun and the worst trouble we ever got into was the occasional interaction with poison oak.
2. Do you remember when and how you first heard about carbon dioxide-buildup/”the greenhouse effect”, and what you thought? When did it – well, take over your life? (!)
I learned about it a little bit throughout high school, but I actually really learned about it when I was doing a random job to make ends meet, writing up case studies for an engineering firm that had redesigned offshore oil platforms for Shell in the 1990s to help prepare for sea level rise. It got me reading about sea level rise and then I was also pretty sure the oil companies weren’t talking about this as a problem at the time…which seemed like a good story for me to pitch as a freelance writer. So I did and wrote about it for a small environmental magazine that no longer exists, and kinda never stopped thinking about it.
But the takeover for me was less about the greenhouse effect and more about the injustice inherent to some small group of people knowing terrible things were coming and that we could stop them, but blocking the whole world from dealing with it.
3. What is “Drilled”, how did it come to be and why should everyone listen to it?
Drilled started out as a true-crime podcast about climate change and is now a global newsroom producing both the podcast and cross-border investigations into climate obstruction with a wide range of partner outlets.
It started out because I had been a longtime climate reporter in print and was wishing I could do radio and then thought well I probably could if I learned how, so had gone to work for a radio station. They had trained me in audio reporting, but I was still working as a climate reporter, at the time mostly for The Guardian where I worked on retainer for several years. There was a bit of a narrative podcast boom at the time, driven primarily by the podcast Serial, and I thought there should be something narrative on climate–only a handful of climate pods existed and they were all interview-based, not stories. But I couldn’t think of something that could carry a whole podcast season either.
Then I got assigned to cover one of the early climate liability cases in California, where the cities of Oakland and San Francisco were suing some of the world’s largest oil companies for their role in delaying action on climate change and thus increasing the costs of adaptation for cities. The judge in that case had called for a climate science tutorial — he was an eccentric guy, known for such things – and both legal teams showed up in San Francisco prepared to present on who knew what, when, and what they’d done with that information. All the characters were there: The eccentric judge, the scientists, the slick oil company lawyers, the activists, and I thought “aha! that’s it, I’ll make a true-crime podcast about climate change.”
At the time, people weren’t really talking about climate as a crime so it was somewhat novel and I thought it was a great idea, but none of the podcast companies were interested. They all said there wouldn’t be enough of an audience. I was really convinced they were wrong so I made it anyway with an audio engineer friend and a small seed grant from a nonprofit, and we wound up getting a million listens to our first season, so that proved that there was an audience. By that point I had ideas for the next three seasons and now we’re working on Season 18.
I still think we produce a pretty unique show — a LOT of investigative research goes into it, but a lot story editing and sound design does too, so hopefully it’s both entertaining and informative.
4. This book – how did it come to be? What is it trying to achieve? What does it do that other books (Ross Gelbspan, Oreskes and Conway) that have looked at climate propaganda didn’t do?
It had a very circuitous path! I co-hosted a season of the podcast Scene on Radio (highly recommend! they dig into the roots of everything from race to patriarchy, the climate crisis, capitalism and more), and an editor at Bloomsbury listened to the season and really liked it and then found out about Drilled from that and listened to the show, then subscribed to our newsletter and so forth and eventually reached out to me to ask if I’d been working on any book ideas. The idea I initially pitched him was a whole book on Herb Schmertz, the legendary VP of public affairs for Mobil, and one of these days I still want to write that book. BUT understandably he thought it was a bit too niche. So we bounced ideas around for about a year and basically co-wrote the proposal for the book. Which is highly unusual!
I felt like other books had focused on one particular type of propaganda — science denial or PR or lobbying — but none had looked yet at how it al works together. I also thought there’d been this tendency to frame this issue as though one industry figured this stuff out and then another industry copied it, which didn’t jive with the documentation I’d seen. I think it’s helpful for people to see how this works across industries and how these strategies were really concocted to help all industries and companies avoid regulation and get around democracy in a variety of ways.
5. Tell us a bit about the process – rummaging around in physical and digital archives? Interviews? Etc? What was the most enjoyable and least enjoyable part of the whole process.
A lot of the research I had already done over the past ten years — I definitely have a bit of an obsession with historical archives and especially visiting them in person, so had been collecting a lot of interesting documents over the years. But to flesh out the book, I did go to quite a few more and yes conducted several interviews. The book is about 370 pages but 100 pages or so are footnotes, because I did pretty exhaustive research and also because I want people to be able to go to primary sources as much as possible, especially if they don’t agree with my take on things.
6. There’s no point giving you five minutes to discuss your books with anyone in the US administration – they’d either forget what you said or ignore you. So instead, I’ll give you five minutes with Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Let’s say he’s read your book. What ELSE would you say to him?
I’d tell him to talk to Tessa Kahn of Uplift about why everything he’s said about North Sea oil is wrong
7. What next for Drilled? For Amy Westervelt?
We’ve got a season coming next month from Nina Lakhani looking at three communities that have been displaced by climate change and what it tells us about current approaches to adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage; and then two seasons planned after that, one on the intersection between the climate crisis and the tech takeover and one on the absolute scam that is investor-state dispute settlement.
I’m co-producing a scripted film on Herb Schmertz and consulting on a couple of other TV and film projects as well. I actually really want to write a speculative fiction book so might just try to do that even though no one is lining up to publish it.
I don’t know if people realize this but I do all the administrative and operational stuff too and it’s a lot of work. Keeping Drilled going financially requires a lot of work and a lot of stress, it never feels like we can be certain we’ll be around from one year to the next, so definitely looking for ways to make things more stable on that front too.
8. Any shout outs to other climate journalism, journalism fullstop – people who deserve more attention than they are getting.
Then I think the folks at the Intercept Brasil are some of the best journalists around. Sharon Lerner does incredible work at ProPublica. Hilary Beaumont all over the place, Sara Sneath at The Guardian. Kendra Pierre-Louis has been doing amazing climate reporting for years. I know I’m immediately going to kick myself for forgetting someone.
